Goodbye 8036
Throughout her life, my mom has made a lifelong habit of correspondence — thank you notes, birthday cards, holiday cards, messages of sympathy, congratulations, or simply to say "I was thinking of you." I inherited this trait from her. I love sending and receiving mail. I always have stamps on hand and a box of notes ready for any occasion.
I began renting P.O. Box 8036 at Liberty Station in the summer of 1999. It's located in the vestibule of a downtown federal building that opened in 1977, the year I was born. At the time, my band was about to release our first album and we needed a business address to serve our administrative needs. Eventually that band ran its course, as did its successor, though we continued to list 8036 on subsequent legal documents. Over time, it became the de facto address for all my various enterprises: the Original Brothers and Sisters of Love, No Bitings Records, Great Lakes Myth Society, Northern Detective, Timothy Monger State Park.
In 2006 I moved away from Ann Arbor to live on a farm in rural Lenawee County which, inexplicably, did not have a mailbox or receive any mail. Since I still commuted to Ann Arbor for work, I used 8036 as my sole mailing address. Those were its peak years. In 2013, I moved closer to Ann Arbor, into a house with a mailbox, but continued renting 8036 out of habit and a measure of sentimentality. It became a sort of tether, a last vestige of my claim to the city. My horcrux. I visited Liberty Station less often, though it continued to serve as my business address, a portal for contracts, tax documents, and other legal detritus. Handwritten missives became exceedingly rare. The cumbersome ULINE catalogs and American Express offers piled up.
In November 2024, I used it as the focal point for my EP, Last Known Address, and memorialized it in the title song. I continued to pay its ever-increasing rent for another year, hoping it might enjoy a renaissance. By the end of 2025, though, it was clear my enthusiasm for maintaining a second address had faded.
On January 30, I entered the vestibule at Liberty Station and checked 8036 one last time. Its contents included two issues of the Ann Arbor Observer, several notices from the post office informing me of the rate increase, and an invoice for its rental. There was also a Christmas card from my friend Nathan Kim with an entertaining note explaining its origin (Liberty Station) and subsequent journey up to Boyne City, before being mailed back downstate to me.
On the back of one of the notices, I wrote "Thanks for the memories. Timothy Monger, P.O. Box 8036, 1999–2026," and placed it in the box. When I surrendered my key to the clerk, he told me "the federal government owes you one dollar."
Ten minutes later I sat drinking a gin and tonic at Old Town, one of Ann Arbor's last remaining townie bars. Back in 1999, my brother and I lived just a few blocks away and he was their day cook. I turned 21 there. I've played dozens of gigs there. Today, it was mostly deserted, just a few patrons slouching in the post-lunch lull. Ron Brooks, a local bassist, sat a few stools away eating soup. Before he was hired at Old Town, my brother was the cook at Ron’s jazz club, the Bird of Paradise, just around the corner. I finished my drink, left my federal dollar on the bar, and stepped out into the street, closing a 27 year chapter of my life.
